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Creating the New MBA Finance Program at Gordon College

December 25, 2018 / Hannah / 0 Comments

On Episode 81 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Alexander Lowry about creating and directing the new MBA finance program at Gordon College.

Sections

A Crisis of Confidence
An Ah-Ha Moment in the Job Search
Working For PA Consulting Group
Moving To London With PG Consulting Group
Moving Back To New York City After Seven Years in London
Scratching The Finance Itch
Working For JPMorgan
Why Gordon College?
Master of Science and Financial Analysis
Building a Finance Program From Scratch
Moving to New England
The Entrepreneurial Side of Things
Building the Vision, the Strategy, the Execution, & the Marketing
Building Connections For Gordon’s Finance Program
Marketing to the Business Professionals
More Episodes
Show Notes

Creating the New MBA Finance Program at Gordon College

A Crisis of Confidence

Paul: Well, welcome to the Edge of Innovation. We’re here today with Alexander Lowry.

But now, that must have been a huge crisis because you lost a job. And the economy… Well, when did you lose the job?

Alexander: So we’re talking the year 2000.

Paul: Oh, okay. 2000.

Alexander: So definitely a crisis of confidence at the very least. As men, I think the general stereotype — and I believe it — is that our identities, if not fully, at least partially, are wrapped up in our job and who we are and how well we do it. So for me, this was a gut-check time of “Am I doing the right thing? Am I headed in the right direction?”

Paul: So what came back?

Alexander: What came back was a little bit of help realizing I was not the only one let go. There were a lot of people losing their jobs at that point because the internet bubble was bursting. And there was probably also an assessment of this is a chance that, to step back and take stock. And that was probably when I first came up with the idea that I could use some help and let’s talk to some other people. Some of my dad’s friends were in business, and were very useful for me to sit down and talk with and learn from and sort of realized that I don’t have to do all this life stuff on my own.

An Ah-Ha Moment in the Job Search

Paul: So can you recall like an ah-ha moment during any of those talks?

Alexander: Well, yeah. I can remember one. So, I want to say about two weeks after I was laid off, I was at a Haverford College mixer/networking event. And one of the alumni, his wife, they were an older couple, was there. And she was a recruiter at Goldman Sachs. So I went up and talked to her. We had a really good conversation. She goes, “You would be a great fit for our position.”

I thought, “Yes, I would.”

And then she started asking me about my career history, and I explained. “I was at my first company for a year, and I left to join this internet consulting company, and then they’ve just laid off all their young analysts.”

She said, “Oh, I can’t hire you.”

I thought, “Why?”

She said, “Well, you’re a job hopper.”

And I said, “I don’t think I am. I’ve got a very good story.”

She goes, “It doesn’t matter. That’s the perception is reality, and that’s what you look like on paper.”

So from my point of view, that was a gut-check in my career thinking I don’t ever want that again. And I was determined that my next job to find a great place where I could grow and develop. I thought, I need to be there at least three years. We’ll talk more about it. Fast forward. It was 12 years, the next job. So it’s never an issue again. Right? But, yeah.

Working For PA Consulting Group

Paul: So, where did you go?

Alexander: So I actually ended up realizing that I loved the consulting, and I wanted to stay in that. But I wanted to be in more of an established company. I loved the startup vibe; I loved the opportunity behind it, the sense that you could grow faster in your career because you’re not in a typical pyramid structure of… Accenture is a good example where they have this very clear pyramid. They bring in tons of young people every year, and you move up. And not that you can’t have a fast-career trajectory, but it’s established. It’s set. And I thought I would like to join a company that somehow mixes the established firm company that is very secure with a startup.

Paul: Okay. That sounds great, yeah.

Alexander: It does. And I actually found one. So PA Consulting Group headquartered out of the UK. It started during World War II. It was Personnel Administration Consulting. The men went off to fight in the war. The women came to work in the factories. They integrated the women in the factories. The men came back after the war. They integrated the men back to the factories. Personnel Administration. And it abbreviated down to PA, so they basically expanded to do every other type of consulting. At one point, they were the second biggest in the world. They had been shrunk a lot, but they were very big in Europe. The Financial Times called them the McKinsey of Europe. Huge name, well recognized. But they were just starting to get a footprint in the US.

So for me, this was the perfect situation. They had, I think, 10, 20 people in the US. I was able to join the New York office at a very critical moment where it was like a startup mode for an established company.

Paul: Cool. Alright. Okay. So did you move? You were in New York still?

Alexander: Still in New York.

Paul: So then what happened next?

Moving To London With PG Consulting Group

Alexander: I worked for them in New York for about three years. And at that point, there was an opportunity they presented me with. They said, “Would you like to go over the headquarters in London?” Now I will also be very clear, one of the reasons I chose this company was also Machiavellian. I did not study abroad in college. I had a great time. I was sitting with professors in their homes junior and senior year, ten people in their living room with very smart people. Really enjoyed that. I didn’t want to go abroad. But I did now. I did. I thought the idea of living somewhere else… Again, I said New York, in my mind, was a normal city. Abnormal, absolutely. But for me, what are the other standards like that? London, in my mind, maybe Paris, maybe Hong Kong. A couple of cities. Can I get to one of those?

So joining this company headquartered in London was always in the back of my mind that that will be of benefit. My assumption was you can always get a transfer to headquarters. Take JPMorgan, for example. If you join them in the London office or the Hong Kong office, New York is the show. If you’re really good, you will eventually get an opportunity to move.

And I became the first American that got the opportunity to go to the London headquarters for this firm.

Paul: Wow. Really.

Alexander: So I was excited about that.

Paul: That is very cool. And so you moved to London.

Alexander: I moved to London. The intent was for what they call secondment. So two years with a third year option. That was the deal. And I got over there and got established, and it was a personal and professional success. So I was enjoying traveling every other weekend, though. It’s a cheap flight capital in Europe, right out of London. Every other weekend you spend a couple of hours, and you’re in a different country, a different culture, a different language — everything else. Just wonder experiences for me.

And I decided I wanted to stay even longer. So after three years, they put me on the local citizenship track. They kept the papers there. I was able to stay long enough to get my passport and the citizenship. So I’ve got that dual standard now. I stayed seven years.

Paul: Wow. Okay. Well, did you leave there?

Moving Back To New York City After Seven Years in London

Alexander: They brought me back to New York. I was missing my friends and family. I felt like I was living a good life over there but wasn’t really established in the sense of… I love the Brits, but they are a careful, closed community, and to be—

Paul: Sort of like New England, but we’ll talk about that later.

Alexander: Okay, that’s good. I need advice. And to break into the circles, you almost had to be dating someone local too. So you need someone to get you in. Right? You needed a reference to get a bank account opened. It’s just the way the society works there.

And from my point of view, I was sort of one foot on this side of the pond one foot on that side, coming back regularly seeing friends and family. And I got to thinking, “Am I going to live here forever, or am I going to go home?” Because if I’m going home to meet someone and settle down and start my life, I’m kind of way behind here. If I’m going to do it here, I better just go all in. So I decided I needed to go back home.

Scratching The Finance Itch

So they brought me back to New York. And at that point, I was thinking, “You know, this is really fun, but I wonder… I’ve never scratched that finance itch. We’d been talking about Wall Street since back in the Haverford days. I think I’d like to do that.”

And the traditional way that someone makes a massive career change like that is business school. That’s the way most people tend to do it. For some reason, it’s so common now to get a two-year traditional MBA — you do a summer internship in between, and you switch — that employers never question it. If you switch most jobs, they say you need a story. You need to be able to explain to someone why. It doesn’t need to be long. It just needs to be clear and believable. You just say business school, and everyone is like “Oh, yeah. Okay.”

So I thought, “Why don’t I use the MBA to switch?” And I ended up going to Wharton to get the MBA, and I also wanted that school, partly, specifically because it is a finance name and it resonates. Everyone hears Wharton, and they’re like “Oh, yeah, finance, Wall Street — makes total sense.” And that was how I switched over to JPMorgan.

Working For JPMorgan

Paul: Wow. Okay. So you went to JPMorgan. What did you do there? What was going to be your job?

Alexander: I joined at a fascinating time. They hired me — which makes total sense — partly because of my consulting background and skill set. And there was what they call the London Whale Scandal. Jamie Dimon famously called it a “tempest in a teapot,” which actually ended up being a really big deal. And what they realized was that they called one of the companies “It’s too big to fail.” It’s just too big to manage is what it is. Even Jamie Dimon, the best banker in, probably, the history of banking, must struggle with it because you have five Fortune 500 companies in one. Absolutely massive. They’re all best at what they do.

And what the company realized with that London Whale Scandal was they actually did not have a true handle on what was going on in the business. When you think about it, Jamie Dimon sitting 50 stories up in the sky does not know anything about what’s going on down below. Information was not getting fed up. They built a brand new unit called oversight and control, which was supposed to sit on top of audit, finance, legal, compliance — everything — to get one source of truth and also to be a single point of contact with the regulators. And the regulators were, say, either coming into the London office and then later coming to the New York office finding the same problems or coming into the investment bank and finding the same problem as the commercial bank. And the business was going, how do we get our own house in order? How do we get this under control?

So they needed that unit established. And I came in, and I helped asset management get it under way, and that’s how I started out.

Paul: Okay. Was that your last job before this?

Alexander: It was not. So after I’d been in that role a year, a year and a half, the business was getting sorted out. Things were under control. We had unearthed a lot of problems, which we expected to, and now we had this long list to solve.

So then in a US private bank — you can think about it as very wealthy clients, affluent individuals — they needed to solve a lot of their problems. So the COO over there said, “Hey, I need a deputy. Come over here. All that stuff you figured out, come over here and solve.” So I was working in the US private bank, deputy COO, which a role I absolutely loved and enjoyed. And another real interesting thing helped. JPMorgan always has fascinating stuff going on. They decided to accelerate the recovery for Detroit. Remember this was when Detroit was going through bankruptcy — big problems. JPMorgan committed $100 million over five years to help accelerate that, which was a huge opportunity.

Now, at that point, our private foundation was already one of the, say, 25th biggest in the country, giving away about 240 million a year. But that system had been set up a long time ago, sort of being held together with Band-Aids. You’re going to add another 100 million on top of that, it would have fallen apart. So I was brought over to be deputy COO there and help solidify that and get it under way. And unbeknownst to me, I did not actually know at the time exactly why that was happening, but there was a clear plan. That role helped set the foundation for where I am now. And, I don’t want to jump ahead too much, but that got me one foot in the nonprofit world already, which led to the academic rollout.

Paul: Interesting. Okay. And is there another job?

Alexander: No, no. So that was four and a half years at JPMorgan.

Paul: Okay so four and a half years at JPMorgan and that brings us to what?

Alexander: Then we came here to Gordon College.

Why Gordon College?

Paul: Why in the world did you…? So you said you were never interesting in academia. And you were never interested in this. Let’s go down this road a little bit. If Gordon hadn’t happened, where would you be?

Alexander: I think we would have ended up in Colorado. So the other thing going on at this time — which we’ve talked a lot about professional — there was the personal life. And my personal life was changing. We talked about being in London. It felt like I hadn’t fully settled down into the roots. As I got back, that was what took up a lot more importance in my life. And I’m fortunate now, just over two years married to the amazing Rebecca, and she is a blessing in my life. And as Rebecca and I were courting and getting ready to get married and were engaged, she said to me one day, she said, “I don’t think you working a hundred hours a week at a bank is really going to be good for us.”

Paul: Yeah, good. Good for her.

Paul: Yeah, she’s great at challenging me in very healthy ways. And I said, “Good point, darling.” So we began thinking about what that could look like and feel like. And we thought, well, you know, we want to settle down. We want to have a family. We’d like to have a house, maybe a picket fence, the dog — whatever it is.

And her brother’s out in Colorado. And we know that it is just an amazing and beautiful place, high quality of life. It’s so popular, all the companies are either relocating or building offices there. And we thought that’s where we would be going as well. So I began looking for opportunities out there and found some really good ones. But about that same time, this opportunity at Gordon College came up.

Now I’ll be very clear, I had never heard of Gordon before. It is a fantastic liberal arts school, but it wasn’t on my radar. You know, I’m a New York fan. It wasn’t really coming to the Boston area.

Paul: Right. Exactly. Well, exactly. It’s an outlier, at best for you, especially. But it wasn’t just an outlier of a school. In other words, this small school in north of Boston. So you’re sort of like oh, my gosh. I’m in finance. That’s like going from being a doctor to something completely different. And so how did that even get broached? Because it’s sort of like maybe you can’t even teach.

Alexander: Well, I think I can, and we’ll find out soon. And that’s a good point. So it’s not as big of a leap, when I explain it, as you’ll think it will be. So I’ve actually done a lot of teaching in my past, and that’s only a part of my job. Leading, it is more. But, so I’ve done a T8 at Wharton and at Haverford and did a lot of running of presentations is part of consulting and a lot of training.

So I’ve got all of the teaching aspect in my background, but it was less about me being brought over to teach. It was more of there is this unique program that was an exact fit. But let me sort of finish off the story from where we were just a moment ago.

So Gordon came and actually found me. I didn’t find them. It was through some friends, again, people on my board who said, “Hey, I know you’re looking in Colorado for these sorts of finance opportunities. This is not what you’re thinking about, but you would be a great fit for this role.” And in my mind, one of the fascinating tests in doesn’t have to hold is, do you find the job, or does the job find you? Which I always find a little more fascinating.

And my wife and I looked at it and, again, wrong geographic direction, wrong sports teams, our family is other parts of the country, so it wasn’t what we were looking for. But when we started digging into it, I realized, in many ways, this is a perfect fit for me. So I probably need to describe the program for just a minute to help you understand what that is.

Paul: Okay. Yeah. Let’s go ahead.

Master of Science and Financial Analysis

Alexander: So the Master of Science and Financial Analysis, again, let’s just call it Masters in Finance — rolls off the tongue a little more easily. This is designed to be a one-year program for people to get a fast track to a great career in finance. And I will contextualize it against a traditional MBA, just because that’s the easiest thing to wrap our head around.

When you go to an MBA, like I go to Wharton, I went to Wharton to study finance, but every MBA program is generally set up the first year you do a little bit of everything. They want to make sure you’re a generalist with some knowledge about strategy, operations, marketing, finance, accounting — everything under the sun. You do your summer internship where you’re testing out do you really want to specialize in the field you think you do. And you come back, and you go, “Yeah, that’s great,” and you spend your second year doing deep dive — marketing, finance, whatever it is.

So I went to Wharton knowing I wanted to be in finance. I’ve already done all the general stuff in consulting, but it was still a great brand for me to have. Compare that to the program that we offer. The assumption for us is you know you want to be in finance. Right? So therefore, you don’t need that first year of general knowledge. You’re just going to specialize. So therefore, it’s half of the opportunity cost in terms of time — and that’s expensive because it’s lost salary. Obviously, there’s a program component cost to it. Average MBA is $140,000. And the top school like Wharton, getting closer to 200.

We charge 30 because we don’t want big debt loads for our students.

Building a Finance Program From Scratch

Alexander: So for me, it was exciting to realize, okay, we were going to build a program from scratch in finance, my field of enjoyment and expertise, all of my project management background, which we might talk through, is great for setting that up. I love being out there and engaging with students and coaching and developing them. Teaching in some of the classes will be exciting. So there were just a lot of reasons we felt like there was a unique opportunity.

Another part of it is you’re talking a small school. We’re not talking Ohio State. We’re not talking big, established brands. You’re building something which is entrepreneurial — I know we’ll get to that. Another part of it is at a smaller institution, you don’t have the same — I’m going to call it — rules, rigmarole, structure. You have some of that at Gordon, but it’s not like at a place like Ohio State where you have to be locked down. Otherwise, it’d be chaos. Therefore realizing there’s probably so much value I can add in other ways to the school. So that was the professional part.

The personal part — my wife and I got up here and visited. This is a beautiful part of the country. I also know I’m going to love three seasons. We really got here and experienced winter. I don’t know about that one as much, but I think it’s justified by the other three. You’ll tell me. But, we’re excited about that. We’re just had our first child, and we just bought a house, and we get to settle down and enjoy this wonderful lifestyle with a better work-life balance in academia.

So all of that is, to us, a big package, which was what made it very attractive.

Paul: Alright, I guess it’s almost like a 180-degree turned.

Alexander: Dramatic.

Paul: Yeah, a dramatic turn.

Alexander: A lot of people actually challenge and say, “Usually people go the other way.”

Moving to New England

Paul: Yeah, exactly, yeah. So now you have a new job, and you’re here in New England in a new world, in many more ways than one. And for those of you who aren’t in New England, New England is an interesting place. You’re not considered somebody who — how would you put it? You’re a newcomer if you’ve been in town for 25 years, okay? And after 25 years, they sort of accept that you’re going to be there, and then you just automatically become a regular, a “towny” if you will, depending on the town you live in.

But it’s really amazing. My wife was born in and raised here, so she’s a New Englander, but for me, it was, against, get some of that by association, but now that I’ve been here over 30 years, it’s inconsequential. Resistance is futile I guess I should say.

So, you’re here. And you’ve been here since January.

Alexander: Well, I started in September, moved up in October.

Paul: Okay. Alright. So, not long at all.

Alexander: Less than a year.

Paul: And so you need to go out and you’re going to sell vacuum cleaners door to door. And you’ve got to sell 30 vacuum cleaners this year for $30,000 apiece. Is that right?

Alexander: Something like that.

The Entrepreneurial Side of Things

Paul: Yeah, you’ve started a new business, effectively. So let’s get into a sense. This sounds like Gordon is being very entrepreneurial with the department that is there. So this finance department or this role is saying, okay, let’s make a go of it, and you’ve got support from Gordon to do that, but you ultimately have to put the people in the seats.

So you’re on a process of that as you’ve been sort of peeling this onion, I guess. What are your hopes, dreams, concerns, plans? How are you going to…? You have a magic wand?

Alexander: Well, that’s interesting because at the moment people ask me, “How are you doing it all? How are you doing, physically getting all of this done?”

I said, “Well, at the moment, it’s just me, myself, and my dog, and I don’t have my dog yet.” So a lot of it’s just the chutzpah and the manpower. My wife would tell you I don’t sleep enough working many days a week. But all of this is great and exciting.

Building the Vision, the Strategy, the Execution, & the Marketing

A big part of it is building the vision, the strategy, the execution, the marketing that get people excited. So a big part of the program for us is just sharing, raising that awareness that if you are going to a great school, and you’re in Podunk, Wherever, no one will know, because the big employers cannot come to you at a small school because you don’t have enough people to justify their time.

Paul: Sure. Okay.

Alexander: So part of the outreach is we have this great school. It’s a program custom-built for you, and it’s right outside the financial hub of Boston. When we talk finance jobs, Wall Street is, of course, what everyone thinks about. That is number one. Number two is a close between San Francisco and Boston. Lots of big companies either headquartered or large presence in Boston. It’s on our doorstep where we have all the connections. And we feel like, for some students, it’s saying, “You come to our program. You get this great credential that makes you stand out.”

So when I got an analyst role at JPMorgan, I was feeling I would have a stack of resumes the size of my hand. I don’t know how many hundreds I would get. How do I take that to a small pile that I might actually look at? Part of that would be if I see someone who has a differentiator like some Master of Education. That shows me they actually care about it, and they’re dedicated to it. You combine that to try to stand out in the market against access to the companies in your local backdoor with strong connections. We feel like that’s a very viable opportunity for a lot of people when you think about this is probably the first time in the last eight years that the businesses expect to hire one to two percent less college grads than they need the previous year.

Paul: So, I can imagine. Let me put this to you. You have people who, if you could get to them at that inflection point where they’re thinking “What do I do next?” or they’ve said, “Gee, I’ve got to do something with finance.” If you could be at the Starbucks when they just spit that out of their mouth and said, “Boy, I’ve got to find a good finance program,” you’d like to be able to sit down next to them and say, “What about considering this?”

So how are you doing that? Because it sounds like you’ve built this in your own life, this mentor system, the personal board. They may or may not have that. But it seems like you’re taking a much more holistic approach that, I think that maybe five years from now, you want to look back, and you have gotten a bunch of people that have personal boards that are advising them to go into this, and they could choose this smaller school to do this and be well on their way to a good career. So how are you thinking about that sort of instantiation or the realization of that, I guess, is what I want to say?

Alexander: So, in terms of how you would take that and execute it for a program like this, to me it’s stages. Take it as project management terms. Like, you cannot do it all at once. You’ve got time, cost, and qualities you’re trying to all balance and how do you want to balance that? Do you want to be average on all of them or good on whom of them? And what I would rather do is make sure we’re building a very strong, quality program and building it with a small cohort initially.

Building Connections For Gordon’s Finance Program

Alexander: So it’s how do you build school connections — a couple of key schools — and leverage it out from there while you’re perfect your messaging. And, we’re thinking about different cohorts of how do you appeal to the locals for the part-time program, build connections with businesses that not only will bring in students as interns or hire them but also will want to send it to their employees and say, “Hey, you should be aware of this program. Take it as a benefit.”

At the same time while going out to undergrads and connecting with them or looking at people that are maybe thinking about an MBA, and you could go to them and make the pitch of, well, instead of a two years and much higher cost, it will fit your needs because you can do it this way. So part of it just the bandwidth of building all of that marketing capacity and taking it to market.

Paul: So I think there’s some things that bear sort of digging into a little bit. So one of your market segments, if you will, is for the undergrads, to talk to them — “Hey, what are you doing next? This is an option. We’d love to talk to you and educate you through that and help you make the best decision for yourself.” And is that the nature of it? Because you go to a website, and it’s so impersonal. And you see a brochure, and it’s so impersonal. Are you trying to break that personal barrier? Are you saying, “Hey, call me. Email me. Let’s talk about your career.”

Alexander: Great question. So I think about it as how do I get change agents. How do I get advocates for the program? And undergrads are a great way to think about it because they are all at an inflection point when they graduate. Whether they go to grad school or get a job, they’re going to do something or take a time and go study abroad. They have to make a decision about something. And you want to, just as you said, if you could find the right people at the right time with the right information, it’s magic.

So senior year, for example, is the right time for people to be saying “Oh, you know what? Maybe instead of grad school, I’ll go work for a little while first,” or “I will consider my other options.” People are wrestling with those decisions. And they’re often wrestling with their advisors. You asked me back at Haverford, “Well, what were your advisors saying? Or your faculty members saying?” If you can make connections with people at the right schools — and it’s no different from any other business. Right? Who are going to be the people that influence for you? There’s only so much of your own time that you can go out and bang on door to door to sell the vacuum cleaners. But, you think about in social media today, if you could have someone on, who is a LinkedIn Influencer or who has got a huge Twitter network, someone like that… Imagine, on your podcast, if you got someone who is incredibly famous — Richard Branson sat down today — like he would sell your podcast to everyone else just by his name just being associated with it.

In some ways, if you can do that for us, if you could get some of the right schools around here, some of the influential faculty members, hopefully will help sell the program.

Marketing to the Business Professionals

Paul: Okay, so now, that’s definitely applicable to the undergrads, but then there’s also this other market opportunity which are professionals. And how do you think you can reach out to them? Like you’ve said, sort of going to local companies, I think that’s a brilliant idea, is to go where they are. But, is there any magic grand plan there?

Alexander: Part of it is, we think about it in different ways. So you could use maybe the geofencing term as a way to think about it. If you were tracking the people who are local to that area, either live or work there. So for example, I had one person who said, “Oh, two years ago, I had to fight traffic to go to BC to get their one-year master’s program. I would have much rather not have fought the traffic and just done it locally.”

So sharing that message and getting that out there is a very smart thing to do. But, of course, you’ve got to figure out the right channels, like for any business. How do you communicate what you need to communicate? Do you go on podcasts? Do you focus on buying ads on Facebook? Are you going to conferences and getting speaking slots? So I’ve gone to some of the North Shore Chambers breakfasts, having connect with the influencers and make that happen.

Paul: Sure. You could wear sandwich boards and just walk up and down streets.

Alexander: That could be the most… Maybe in the summer at the beach.

Paul: There you go. There you go. Definitely a challenge, and I think that’s why I sort of leapt to the “You’re an entrepreneur” because you have an idea; you have some wind at your back with the institution; but you really have an idea and some process, converting that into a business or a success is really a huge step to make that happen.

So, we’ve been talking with Alexander Lowry of Gordon College.

Alexander: It was a pleasure, thank you for your time today Paul. I enjoyed it.

Paul: Well thank you for coming in.

More Episodes:

This is Part 2 of our interview with Alexander Lowry. If you missed Part 1 “Masters of Science & Financial Analysis,” you can listen to it here!

Listen to the next episode, Part 3, here! We’ll be talking with Alexander Lowry about Ethics in the Finance World and more!

Show Notes:

Masters of Science in Financial Analysis: Alexander Lowry

December 11, 2018 / Hannah / 0 Comments

On Episode 80 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with Alexander Lowry, Master of Science in Financial Analysis at Gordon College.

Sections

Introduction
Gordon College’s New Masters Finance Program
A Different Kind of Entrepreneur
Growing Up in the Shadow of New York City
A History Major at Haverford College
“I Guess I’ll Go To Wall Street”
What is a Personal Board of Mangers?
Putting Together a Personal Board
Approaching People to Be On Your Board
Who Should Be On Your Personal Board?
Why Alexander Went Into Finance
Internship at Wharton School
Pursuing Management Consulting
The Bubble Burst: Losing a Job
More Episodes
Show Notes

Master of Science in Financial Analysis: Alexander Lowry

Introduction

Paul: Well, welcome to the Edge of Innovation. We’re here today with Alexander Lowry. Alexander, say hello.

Alexander: Good afternoon. Good morning. It depends where you are, I suppose.

Paul: That’s true. And when somebody listens to this. It could be in the past, the future… Who knows?

Alexander: Could be good evening.

Paul: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. So, what are you doing right now? You’re working with a school, a liberal arts school here on the North Shore of Massachusetts. We’re in Beverly, Massachusetts. So, you’re working at Gordon College in Hamilton.

Alexander: I am the Director of the Master of Science in Financial Analysis program at Gordon College. And in a situation like this, I just abbreviate it down to say the Master’s in Finance program. It’s a lot easier for everybody to wrap their mind around.

Gordon College’s New Masters Finance Program

Paul: Okay. Alright. And so this is a new program at Gordon?

Alexander: It is. We just launched out first classes in January.

Paul: Okay, January. So that’s four months ago? Five months ago?

Alexander: We’re now finishing our first semester.

Paul: So we’re in May of 2018. Financial analysis? Master of Financial Analysis.

Alexander: That’s right.

Paul: And this didn’t exist before you were there.

Alexander: That’s right. I was hired to launch and lead the program. I’ll also be teaching in it, but it is a brand new endeavor for Gordon.

A Different Kind of Entrepreneur

Paul: Okay. So you’re an entrepreneur today.

Alexander: That’s funny. You and I were talking about this before we started. I would not have thought of myself as an entrepreneur when I was growing up, but I am.

Paul: Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about that. You know, we’re trying to get sort of more of a long-form story than just the soundbite of people and how they’ve gotten to where they are and why they’re there.

Growing Up in the Shadow of New York City

Paul: And so when you grew up, where did you grow up?

Alexander: I grew up in New Jersey, not too far from Newark. It didn’t look like Newark, but Essex County, New Jersey, a stone’s throw for New York City.

Paul: Is that a good place to be from?

Alexander: I grew up in a town that was sort of a little bit of a bubble. It was one of those homogeneous towns you envision as a very safe place, great schools, nice spot to grow up. But you had the access to New York City to the point where you started to think New York City is average. New York City is anything but average. Right? It is a unique place.

Paul: So you grew up in the shadow of New York City?

Alexander: Correct.

Paul: Is that fair?

Alexander: They called us Bridge and Tunnel.

Paul: Bridge and Tunnel. Wow. Interesting. How old are you?

Alexander: Forty…one.

Paul: 40. Okay, 41. So when you were a kid, what were you interested in? What were you going to be when you grew up?

Alexander: There were definitely times where I would be playing for the New York Yankees which was my team growing up. I’m sure that’s a myth about everybody around here.

Paul: Well, yeah, that’s true. But we’re international, so that’s okay.

Alexander: So it was probably about third grade. I was an all-star on a baseball team, but, as you would see me, Paul, I’m 6’8″ now. I’m a pretty big guy, so my strike zone got a bit massive. I’m not a Stanton. I’m not a Judge. I can’t really keep up with the ball, so it was clearly not my sport.

Paul: Okay.

Alexander: And at that point, we grew up, and we got bigger, and I thought I was going to be a doctor like my father. My — just to give you a sense of the medical family — my dad’s a doctor; my mom’s a nurse. My grandfather’s a doctor; my grandmother’s a nurse. My great-grandfather’s a doctor. You kind of get the idea.

Paul: Yeah, okay. Your dog’s a doctor on TV. Do you have any siblings?

Alexander: I have two younger sisters.

Paul: Two younger sisters. Okay, so you’re the oldest. So you’ve got to perform. You’ve got to do all this, and you decided to go to college, I imagine. Where did you go?

A History Major at Haverford College

Alexander: Haverford College outside of Philadelphia.

Paul: Okay. Not too far from home.

Alexander: It was actually the perfect distance. It was close enough I could come home when I wanted to but too far for my parents to come every time.

Paul: Okay. And what was your course of study?

Alexander: So I was a history major. Haverford is one of those small schools, not too dissimilar to Gordon. It’s a little bit smaller, 1200 students, great liberal arts school where you get to learn a bit about everything. You know, we were not great at sports. I played basketball, which, you know, God gave me height, not athletic ability. Right? But it was one of those places where you could do what you wanted to do. I’ve always loved history, read it, studied it as a passion. So for me to be able to spend four years as a deep dive, it was great. It didn’t necessarily lead to the right career choices because I didn’t want to get a PhD, and didn’t plan to be in education at that point.

Paul: Okay, so history. What’s your favorite part of history? What do you love to read?

Alexander: Well, I will put this into context. So I also lived in London for seven years, and I majored in American history here. And the British like to make fun of you. Their terminology is “take the piss out of you.” And so I would tell them I majored in American history, and they’d say, “What did you study the second week?”

Paul: That’s true. Okay. We’ll get to how you got to England, I guess.

Alexander: Sure.

Paul: Okay. So you graduated with a bachelor of arts in history?

Alexander: Yes.

Paul: And what happened then?

Alexander: Well, I had the equivalent of a minor in economics. So at the time, Haverford technically didn’t have minors then. They do now. And the only real business subject we had was economics. We didn’t have finance majors. We didn’t have business majors or accounting. So I did it about as much as I could have, I suppose, to be ready for business, so I thought.

Paul: Was that intentional?

Alexander: Yes.

Paul: So what gave you the insight to think that?

“I Guess I’ll Go To Wall Street”

Alexander: I’d always been fascinated by money and finance sort of as a passion on the side. I went into college thinking I was going to go into medicine, follow in my family footsteps. And after about three semesters realized this was not what I wanted to do. So then I was enjoying history but thinking, you know, I’ll just get a job. I’m a smart person. I’ll get a job in finance afterwards. I guess I’ll go to Wall Street. I grew up around New York City.

Paul: Whoa, hold on though. I mean, it’s one thing to say that, but was that viable for you? You’re how far into college, you’re saying that?

Alexander: Well, it was probably about junior year when I thought I should do this.

Paul: And were your advisors saying that’s viable? Or did you have any mentors that were saying that’s a good way to go? Because your parents are like “Oh, we’ve lost him. He’s not going to be in the medical industry. It’s a hopeless thing,” you know.

Alexander: So, ignorance is bliss is part of it. And I would also say that one of the wonderful parts of working in academia now is I understand behind the scenes more, maybe, what happened to me along the way. So if you get people that are successful in their career and have always been in academia, that’s what they know. So Haverford is a very small school. Not a lot of the resources you’d have at, say, some of the bigger institutions. So I didn’t necessarily have access to some of the business mentors that I would have had today now that everyone is more focused on it. So I was probably making a lot of those choices on my own in absentia.

Paul: Okay, so I’m trying to think because we’ve talked about, and you’re doing this new entrepreneurial thing, which we’ll get into later, and people are sitting out there listening, and there’s some catalyst that’s going to occur that happened in your life. Maybe you just stumbled into it, and that’s possible, but would make them consider maybe investing in a financial analytics or an MBA or whatever these different types of finance degrees might be. How did you stumble into that? So you didn’t have the advisors is, I think, you’re saying. It wasn’t deliberate. You had a minor in economics. Did you try and go get a job? Or what happened?

What is a Personal Board of Mangers?

Alexander: Well, so I think there will be a couple of parts to this. There will be some lessons learned and takeaways for other people at different stages along this story, and it will also be my journey and how it came about. So, we’ll get to both of those in time. But one of the lessons learned will be just what you’re alluding to now, is making sure, the way I describe it, you want to have your own board of managers around you at all points in your career that change and grow as you change and grow — whether that’s your industry focus, your sector knowledge, whatever it might be.

So, if we look at someone in college thinking about “I want to grow and develop,” say, depending on where you’re studying, some schools are really strong at helping their students think about it. I think Endicott, locally, has a very good reputation about preparing students for careers. Other schools maybe not as much. And so your job is, if I don’t have the right people around me automatically, how do I find them and get them?

So just as you were alluding to, I could have used more of those, not just truth tellers but people knowledgeable about in their different space and how do I learn and grow from them.

Paul: Alright. So let me just reiterate what you’re saying. So are you saying to me — I am in college; I’m a sophomore or junior — I should put a personal board together?

Alexander: Absolutely. I think everyone should have that at all points in their life, and I’ve got it in different aspects of it. Right? I sort of divide my life, when I think about my goals, into what I call the five F’s. So you’ve got your friends, your family, your faith, your finances, and your fitness. And if you think those are the five big buckets, I’m never going to do really well in all five at once, but I can do well in three of them at once. I could be mediocre in all five. So think about it almost as your board composition, as you prioritize your life into different buckets, do you have one or two people that you can go to for those different areas to say, for example, like I’m a new father. I would go to one of my board members and say, “I am really struggling to find the time on my fitness side compared to what I used to before. How did you do it when you were a new dad?” That sort of thing.

So you want to have those people around you that I could have gone and said, “Hey, I’m a history major, and I think I want to go into Wall Street. Is that going to be an easy thing? Am I being a little bit silly here?” I didn’t have that, and I know to do that now.

Putting Together a Personal Board

Paul: Okay. Well that’s a great opportunity for everybody listening to think about that. So let’s just take a little tour down that road. Have you put together a personal board?

Alexander: I do. And I think about it as it sort of constantly evolves. And the way I’ll often think about it is, the way many of us do, January is the time of year people make resolutions. And I will take those five buckets, and I will say “What’s the one thing — maybe two — but really, what’s one thing each year that I’m going to prioritize and do around those and that’s achievable?” And so I’ve got my goals, and then I’m going to share them with my board, which also gives me a chance to reassess, are the people…you could think of it as mentor rather than board, if board sounds too formal. Who are the people around me in my life that are going to help me in that this year — not only guidance but also keeping me accountable? Right? Some of them are friends. Some are associates. It could be anybody you want it to be, but do you have people in your life who are going to give you that salt and that light in the sense. Sometimes they need to tell you, “This is great. Go get it. Work hard. I will support you.”

Other people that say, “I’d put the brakes on there. I don’t if that’s realistic. Maybe that’s a five-year goal,” whatever it might be.

Paul: Interesting. So it sounds very deliberate.

Alexander: Intentional.

Paul: So in January, did you like send them an email? Call them? Do you do it together?

Alexander: Great question. I didn’t need to change any of my board members this year, if you want to think about it that way. Sometimes you need to, whether you’re changing jobs or you’re relocating to a different part of the country or maybe you’re shifting from school to work life. You might need a dramatic shakeup. I didn’t this year. So I already have the people I interact with, and, for me, it was partly just being very clear and open with them. And an email is the best way because it’s on record. “Here’s what I’m going to do this year. Here’s how I need you to help me do that.” And, you know, if someone didn’t have the time or the energy, they would tell me that, and they’d opt out, and I’d find a replacement for them.

Paul: So did you do that in January?

Alexander: I did.

Paul: So you sent out an email. Individualized for each board member?

Alexander: The group I have at the moment—

Paul: They know each other?

Alexander: – was from New York. They all knew each other.

Paul: Alright. So you just sent one email and said, “Hey, men and women, this is what I’m doing. Am I insane? Am I sane? Is this good? Give me your wisdom, caution, encouragement.”

Alexander: Right.

Approaching People to Be On Your Board

Paul: Okay. Cool. I’ve heard of this, but I’ve not heard a lot of people get into the details of the nitty gritty of it. So it’s like, “Oh, yeah. I should get a personal board. That’s a great idea.” Alexander said that. Okay. And then a year later, I still don’t have a board. So when you ask these people to be on your board, did you say well here’s the compensation. Is it done when they’re tired so they make a mistake and say yes. How, how did you approach that?

Alexander: I think it’s dependent on the individual and your relationship with them. So, imagine it’s a work environment, and you have a senior person who you would love to mentor you. How you approach that is very different from someone you might know from church or soccer or somewhere else where you have a relationship established. And I don’t necessarily feel like I’m putting myself out on the line because I tend to think of it as a pay-it-forward type model where I know I need to grow. And I sort of think about it, I’ve got three directions in my life — upwards, downwards, and sideways. I need people above me who are mentoring down to me. I need people below me that I am mentoring and bringing up. And I need people who are my peers who are probably helping keep me sane about where should we be in this journey.

So, if you’re thinking about also the board composition, it’s some of those different types of people. Like people, the downwards ones for me, I’m on their board.

Paul: Yeah, exactly.

Alexander: And my peers are going, “Hey, who’s on your board? How did you do your board? What do we do? How do we talk about this?” Because you don’t have to reinvent that wheel from scratch.

Paul: But what did that conversation look like to one of your mentors?

Alexander: For me, it was as simple as Tom Cole who runs NCS Manhattan, one of my dear friends, one of my best mentors, and it was being very clear of I know I am open and ready for coaching and advice. I’ve seen you pour into other people. I would love some of that knowledge dropped on me.

Paul: And then his acknowledgement was “Yeah, we’ll see” or “Maybe” or “Yes”?

Alexander: I think it was probably more of “I’ve been waiting for you to get to this point.”

Paul: Right. But it just happens to be a conversation that you have, or is there something more formal? Or is there a more emotional commitment to it? It’s sort of like “Hey, would you be my mentor? I’ve seen you do all this stuff. You’re a great person,” and all this different stuff.

And they say, “Yeah, yeah, sure.” And then they really didn’t understand what it was. And so there’s that aspect of it. Then there’s the person who does it, and then doesn’t respond to your questions but basically pries open your life and says things. “Hey, you shouldn’t be doing this,” or, “You should be doing this.” How does that work? What’s that balance?

Who Should Be On Your Personal Board?

Alexander: Great question. It will vary. So let’s take the work environment. So, for example Bob Doll is speaking at an event I’m running tomorrow. Let’s pretend I work with Bob in Nuveen. Bob was very senior. If I could get some of his time in my life on a regular basis, I would be immensely valuable on so many fronts. He probably has a lot of people that ask for that. So I would go into that conversation, knowing in my mind what my ask is, very specifically. It’s probably not a lot because I may not know him. I don’t have a strong relationship. I want be able to set expectations. “Hey Bob, if you say yes to this, here’s what I’d be asking of you. Here’s the frequency. Here’s the detail. And are you comfortable with that?”

And obviously, you need an opt out for the person to say no or not now. And that’s totally fine too because you only want board members who are willing to live into your life.

Paul: Right. So now these people that you’ve selected for your board, is it that they pretty much are passive and wait for you to say something, and then they respond? Or are there people that are actually reaching into your life?

Alexander: It goes both ways.

Paul: Really? Well good.

Alexander: And I think I need two types of those people. Right? So if I had everybody who was passive and I was in a spot in my life where I was overwhelmed, probably nothing would ever happen. So you want to be thoughtful about your board composition — we talked about sort of upwards, downwards, and sideways, different sectors, different industries, different types of your life, probably also different approaches to how they do life, different mentalities — so that you’ve got some people who, you know… I’m a planner. I’m a project management type person. It’s very easy for me to write a note in my list on my phone because that’s where I live. It will be like, oh, every week, I’m going to check in with Bob. I’m going to see how Ted is doing. I want to know what—

Paul: Is that the level to which you’re doing it? Are you in contact with these people weekly, monthly?

Alexander: Not necessarily. But, for me, that is the way that I would manage someone. So I’ve got a buddy who is going through some tough stuff right now. I’ve got a note on my phone, and every three days, I want to call him. And if I don’t, I’m going to move it to the next day.

Paul: So he’s more of your mentee.

Alexander: Yeah.

Paul: Okay. Alright.

Alexander: And there are some of the people on my board who, they just wait for me. They’re really busy. They’re happy to give me time when I’m ready, and there are others who are going to go, “I haven’t heard from you in a month. Are you doing okay? What’s going on?” And I need that.

Why Alexander Went Into Finance

Paul: Excellent. Okay. So let’s rewind a little bit here. We were talking about…you’re in college. You don’t have a personal board. Right? You’re a junior. You’re thinking about finance. The school didn’t really have any advice. Now, what in the world made you think about finance? Was it the money?

Alexander: I’ve been curious about finance and investing, which we’ll find out later when we talk about my current role, is a perfect with that. So that had always been something I had been reading about and studying about, growing up in high school, I really enjoyed, which is probably why the minor in economics made sense. I loved that sort of topic, but it wasn’t something I was as passionate about as the history, which I just enjoyed. Right? So for me, picking up a history book, reading on the beach, something like that is fantastic.

Paul: Yeah, okay.

Alexander: So that was fun. That was a fun study. For me, thinking what do I want to do with my life? What’s practical? Where does the intersection between my interest and my skill set work? And it seemed to be finance.

Paul: In what way?

Alexander: So investing and the idea of being involved in what actually makes the money behind the scenes and helping other people manage their money. It just seemed to be something that I loved reading about so much. So it would be a great fit, I thought.

Paul: Okay. Alright. Good. That’s fair.

Alexander: Fairly ignorant of the whole industry at that point.

Paul: A junior in college.

Alexander: Yeah.

Paul: And you didn’t really have any advisors.

Alexander: I didn’t really know enough to get them. But I would say I was probably a little arrogant back then as well with the assumption that when I got my first job a year after that, I was determined to do it all on my own. And I did. Which I would say is actually pretty stupid because the whole point is, why do it the hard way?

Paul: Well, yeah. I guess it’s what do you think was your rationale of doing it on your own.

Alexander: A little bit of hubris.

Paul: Well, certainly. But I mean, why would you try and lift a car by yourself?

Alexander: I wanted to prove I could, and I think I probably also wanted to prove it to my father too. I felt like this would… You know, not going into the medical field where he was very successful, I could be a bigshot in my own world as well. So there was definitely a little chip on my shoulder.

Paul: Okay. Alright. Interesting. That’s because I’ve been an entrepreneur in a lot of different roles, and I’ve never thought of “I’m going to do this on my own,” just because it’s insane. I mean, you can’t lift a car on your own. I’m just like…

Alexander: Just thinking about starting up a business. You could probably, already there’s three different types of people that you need and the skill sets. And you could say, maybe someone would say, “Hey, I’m good at all of those.” Well, you’re probably average at all of those. You’re not good at all of those. Pick the one you’re good in and find the other people you’re going to partner with. You need those skill sets.

Internship at Wharton School

Paul: Right. Okay. So you said a year later you got a job. So where did you go? Where did you end up?

Alexander: So I actually got an internship that summer. So my junior summer, I’m at the Wharton School at their small business development center. And I was really pleased. I’m thinking this is going to look great on my resume. And it did, but it also was a wonderful eye-opening experience for me because most of the people working there that were my peers were from the Wharton School — the MBAs and the undergrads. And what I quickly realized was, hmmm, all of the company that I’m looking to apply to, all of the people right up the road at Wharton undergrad, my peers, are also applying to. And I’m a huge believer in liberal arts. I think that makes for wonderful long-term success. But if you put the person side by side against a Wharton undergrad… Now, I’ll give a caveat.

It is not required to have an undergrad business degree because there is only one Ivy League school that does and that’s Penn. It has Wharton. If it was required, they would all have it. Right? They don’t. That’s my theory. But there is a tremendous learning curve. These are the best of the best people who knew they wanted to be in finance probably from birth. They are hugely up the learning curve. They’re enthusiastic. They’re excited. They’re doing all the right things.

For an employer to come in, it was very easy to see them and say, “Plug and play. Johnny, I will put you on my desk, and you’re going to be phenomenal.” You put a liberal arts student side by side, regardless of what they majored in, regardless of what they know, they’re going to be at least a half step behind.

Now I would argue that when you join a company, they’re going to teach you the model they want. They’re going to teach you their methods. A liberal arts student has to catch up to the Wharton student, but once they do, if they do, they’ve got other skill sets. They can take off — the research, writing, communing, the presenting that the Wharton students don’t focus on as much. But for an initial employer, that’s a big ask.

Paul: Interesting. Okay, so you were at Wharton in an internship. And then what happened?

Pursuing Management Consulting

Alexander: So after that, there was a combination of consulting and finance for that summer, which sort of opened up my mind. Oh, I’ve got these two different paths. Both look really cool. And I actually realized management consulting is kind of a perfect fit from a liberal arts background education, you know. A little bit about everything. You get to deep dive into different industries, different sectors. You’re working with executives that are way above your paygrade. You’re 22 years old sitting with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. That’s a phenomenal experience.

So part of me thought maybe that would be a great way to start. And so I pursued those two types of jobs as I was getting out of school. And I thought, “Finance I’ve always loved. That could be great. Or there’s the consulting route.” And I realized the finance was going to be hard, like we talked about, because the Wharton undergrad students are getting those jobs and rightfully so. They are phenomenal.

So I went down the consulting route, and that’s where I started.

Paul: Okay. And what year was this?

Alexander: This was ’99.

Paul: ’99. Okay. So nothing is…

Alexander: We had had the debt crisis in ’98, which seemed like a tough year to get a job. ’99 was a little better. You were getting the internet bubble, so people were enthusiastic.

Paul: Right. That’s what I was just saying. The bubble was just forming, and then 2000, and then 2001 happened. So were you at this same job during 2001?

Alexander: So the way it started out, I actually joined a financial services consulting company, which was a great fit for me, thinking I’m going to cover both of these off. And so I worked there for a year, and I was watching all of the fun stuff happening with the internet bubble. And all of my friends with stock options, working with these really cool companies, and I thought maybe there’s a better way to do this. So I actually, after a year, moved over to one of the internet consulting companies. There was Viant, Razorfish…

There was one called Mainspring that I was able to join right before they IPOed. I thought this is a great fit. What did we have? A fully stocked kitchen. We had a bouldering wall. We had racquetball — all sorts of stuff inside. And it’s me, just a year out of college, thinking this is like the greatest business in the world. I love this. I don’t care how hard I’m working. This is fun.

And when I look back now and realize it was not a business, technically, at that point. It was a charity. It wasn’t making money.

So we IPOed and that’s great. And that was exciting. I was a part of that.

The Bubble Burst: Losing a Job

Alexander: And then the bubble burst. And then the company was bleeding cash, and they let go of all of the analysts because they couldn’t afford any.

Paul: Sure. And then is in Manhattan or…?

Alexander: This was in Manhattan.

Paul: So low rent, you know. Fascinating. Okay, so you lost a job.

Alexander: Lost a job, which, in retrospect, while very tough at the time, was a phenomenal learning experience.

Paul: Oh, yeah. I know exactly what you mean.

So, we’ve been talking with Alexander Lowry of Gordon College.

Alexander: It was a pleasure, thank you for your time today Paul. I enjoyed it.

Paul: Well thank you for coming in.

More Episodes:

This is Part 1 of our interview with Alexander Lowry. Be sure to listen to Part 2 here! We’re talking with Alexander about creating the new MBA Finance Program at Gordon College.